An MP has warned that “food security is national security”, as concerns grow about the risk of food shortages in the UK. Sharing photos of empty supermarket shelves in his Shetland constituency on social media, Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael told his followers that “the next time someone tells you that we can rely on imports for our food needs, show them these pictures”.

Why has the alarm been raised?
“Food policy across much of the world is changing. But not in Britain,” said The Guardian. As the “prices of essentials rise”, this “may be a costly mistake” because the “climate emergency, geopolitical tensions and the fragility of just-in-time supply chains” are putting huge pressure on food supplies in the UK.

Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany are all “rebuilding stocks dismantled after the Cold War”, Egypt and Bangladesh are “boosting similar programmes”, and Brazil and Indonesia are “also expanding their reserves”. But the UK has “no substantial public food reserves”.

What measures are in place?
Britain’s current strategy “rests almost entirely on global markets and private intentions”, meaning that, even if there’s a war, official advice “focuses on households stockpiling essentials”. In Britain, food security is about “prices, not scarcity of supply”.

Things might change, however. Last summer, the government launched a new food strategy aimed at building “improved resilience of the supply chain”, with “reduced impact of shocks and chronic risks on access to healthy and sustainable food”.

What more could be done?
The national food strategy is “only the first step”, said the Economics Observatory. “There are several useful ways to calm the coming storm,” including modelling food systems on computers or deploying a policy tool that “tests potential interventions that increase the resilience of the food system”.

Public buffer stocks can serve as shock absorbers, steadying prices and ensuring physical supply. Stocks can be “accumulated when prices are low” and released when “inflation spikes” or supply is limited, said The Guardian. The short-term losses “should be understood as the price of resilience”, like flood defences.

Life without a smartphone may seem unimaginable but the AI giants are planning to consign it to the scrapheap. “The race to unseat the smartphone is on,” said The Economist, and the new generation of AI-powered devices lined up to replace it could radically change our lives.

Disrupting the duopoly
Over the last 20 years, the smartphone has “come to dominate how consumers interact with the digital world”, creating “one of the most lucrative duopolies in business history”, in the shape of Apple’s iPhone, and Google’s Android operating system. But now OpenAI says it’s “on track” to unveil its own device in the second half of the year, Meta is developing AI-powered smart glasses, and Amazon has “rolled out” Alexa+, its own AI assistant to its Echo smart speakers. 

Many of the world’s biggest tech companies think that a “radical shift is underway”, and it could eventually make the smartphone, as we know it, “passé”, said The New York Times.

This isn’t just about business, said The Economist: some disruptors have “long-standing grievances” with the smartphone “tribute system” that means developers have to pay Apple a commission of up to 30% on purchases made through apps running on its operating system. Apple has also riled up Meta by making it harder for the social-media giant to “hoover up data” from its gadgets.

AI on the go
Experts say the new AI assistants are far more capable and flexible than simple voice helpers like Siri. They will soon supersede smartphone software in importance, said The New York Times. Apps will lose their relevance when AI assistants are “automatically carrying out tasks” like “making plans with friends, generating shopping lists and taking notes in meetings”. Smartphones could be replaced by smart glasses, while “ambient computers”, with “microphone-equipped speakers” and screens “placed throughout a home, and gadgets worn on the body” will also dovetail with AI assistants.

But, for the time being at least, the threat to Apple and Google remains “Lilliputian”, said The Economist. While there are 15 million owners of smart glasses worldwide, Apple is thought to have shifted 250 million iPhones in the last year alone.

A Carabinieri officer escorts a woman as she collects belongings from her home in the “red zone” of the Sicilian town of Niscemi. Around 1,500 people have been forced to evacuate their homes in the hillside town, following a mammoth landslide triggered by severe weather.

Marco Bertorello / AFP / Getty Images

There is something special about a bookshop: peace and quiet, fleeting rays of sunlight cutting through old windows, and that distinctive smell. Here are some of the best bookshops to browse in around Britain...

Barter Books, Alnwick, Northumberland
Set in a “grand Victorian railway station”, Barter Books is “one of Britain’s biggest second-hand bookshops”, said Lauran Elsden in Country Living. The venue has stayed true to its roots, with a model railway set “chugging away” among the “generously stacked” shelves.

Hay Cinema Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye, Wales
There is no better place for “bibliophiles and avid readers” than this, said Chris Moss in The Telegraph. “Exploring its shelves is akin to being inside a capacious old library that is fairly ordered and also full of surprises”, boasting more than 200,000 second-hand and antiquarian volumes.

The Heath Bookshop, King’s Heath, Birmingham
Winner of The Bookseller’s Independent Bookshop of the Year award in 2025, the Heath is considered the “cultural heart” of the area. Co-owners Catherine and Claire have “done an amazing job with their space,” said the judges. This is the type of bookshop in which you “feel like you want to hang out”.

Far From the Madding Crowd, Linlithgow, Scotland
This “much-loved” bookshop occupies one of the “handsome Georgian buildings flanking the high street” of this Scottish market town, said Sarah Barrell in National Geographic. Aptly, it has a “strong selection” of Scottish titles, and even features a “bothy” that’s perfect for quiet reading.

Do markets make us moral?
Soumaya Keynes in the Financial Times
“Markets are a bit like Marmite,” writes Soumaya Keynes. The “haters find them gross”, responsible for “fraying our social fabric”; the lovers “rave” about their “honesty and honourability”. A new study of past “US economic transformation” finds “commercial opportunities” make “people more outward-looking” and tolerant, but also weaken “family-based co-operation”, making life harder for “vulnerable people”. So, there’s no “simple answer”. This Marmite is not “delicious or disgusting” but “a complex mix of flavours reorienting your taste buds”.

Starmer’s oikophobia is erasing so much that is great about Britain
Allister Heath in The Telegraph
“Why is Keir Starmer waging war on all that was once special about Britain?” writes Allister Heath. “What has he got against” our veterans, pubs and farmers, “our eccentricities great and small” and “our proud tradition of free speech and democracy”? He doesn’t want us to be “distinctive” but a bland, lawyer-designed “blancmange of a welfare state”. He’s an “oikophobe”, repudiating “national loyalties” and revering “global bureaucracies”. I say “enough of this nihilism”; “we need an oikophile restoration”.

The Middle East Has Two New Rival Teams
Firas Maksad on Foreign Policy
Iran “no longer” shapes the Middle East’s “strategic trajectory”, writes Firas Maksad of global political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. Now it’s a “competition between two emerging blocs”: the “Abrahamic” – Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Greece, India – which aims to “reconfigure the region through military power”, and technological and “economic integration”; and the “Islamic” – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt – which prefers “existing structures”. Can Donald Trump “fold them” both “under America’s large Middle Eastern tent”?